ERIC ON ... SENSE OF HUMOUR FAILURE

In April 2005, Itzé and I were wandering around the giftshop at the "Yorktown" in Charleston, South Carolina, where they had some imitation hand grenades on sale. I had it in my mind to buy one. It would have given Customs a heart attack when they examined my suitcase.
 
Serve them right too. This collective loss of sense of humour by government officials is annoying.
 
When the UK was being blown to bits by the American-funded IRA in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, we Brits all thought it was hilarious and went around telling terrorist jokes all the time. These days, of course, it's illegal to laugh and you are liable to be carted off to Belmarsh if you don't take it seriously.
 
Humour is a great safety-valve and is wonderful for releasing the tension. Go round the UK in 2007 and it's like everyone is living in a big pressure cooker with the valve stuck down. And we know what happens when a boiler explodes.
 
In the 1920s, British experts made a study of the effects of bombing. They examined carefully the works of people like General Douhet, and came to the conclusion that at the fall of the first few bombs on civilian targets, there would be a panic, the citizens would riot and force the Government to sue for peace.
 
This led to the famous quote of Stanley Baldwin in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 that "the bomber will always get through". This was exposed as a shameless fraud over South-East England in the summer of 1940 and in the daylight over Germany in 1942. And when the bombs did start to fall in massive numbers over industrial Britain in late 1940 and 1941, and when the British massacred German civilians in their tens of thousands in Hamburg, Berlin and Dresden, the population didn't panic for a moment.
 
This was because the population had their own safety valves for letting off steam and for letting out the tension. Humour is just one of these safety valve, and to suppress it or to threaten it is just screwing the valve down tighter.
 
And the seeds of panic are already here. Look at how deserting passengers after 11 September 2001 brought several major airlines to their knees, and how London Transport was abandoned by its passengers after the London bombings. All of this can be laid squarely at the doors of the governments of the UK and the USA who, instead of reassuring their citizens that these are just isolated events that are unlikely ever to be repeated, have grossly exaggerated their effects as a means to terrorise their own citizens.
 
The purpose of a terror-bombing campaign isn't to kill or destroy. It's impossible to do that in such large numbers as would be required. The aim of a terrorist is to sow fear, distrust and suspicion. The British cottoned on to this in World War II when, on nights unsuitable for bombing, they used to send aircraft just to stooge around the German skies for the purpose of frightening the civilians. These days the terrorists have no need to make any effort at all. The Governments are doing their jobs for them.
 
Now that all the citizens of the UK and the USA are living in total fear thanks to their governments, the governments have created the very circumstances that the British of the 1920s and 1930s had feared. However would citizens of today have coped under the IRA offensive?
 
The British and American governments don't have a clue.

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